What is Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is defined as using social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, and other social networks to market your product or service. The goal of SMM is to increase brand awareness, customer base expansion, or improve an online presence through web channels.

Many companies have employees who wear marketing and PR hats at once by updating Facebook statuses, tweeting new products/services, and sharing YouTube videos across their accounts.

While the Internet has given the average consumer limitless information at their fingertips, many businesses are still trying to find effective methods for reaching out to consumers and promoting their brand reputation.

Why is Social Media Marketing Important?

Social media marketing is all about getting more exposure for your business through social media. That means the next best option after organic SEO isn’t PPC, but rather reaching out to users on social media sites where others are also looking for campaigns similar to yours.

From there, you can get them to follow links back to your site and engage with everything else you’re doing online. Of course, this takes a lot of time and dedication, but it’s how many companies are growing their business these days.

Marketing through social media sites has taken off in recent years, so much so that it has become its field of study. Social media marketers have come up with different models for engagement optimization, content discovery, campaign determinants, and many more. Every one of them is worth reading about and understanding. The more you learn, the better your campaigns will turn out for sure.

How much does Social Media Marketing cost?

The cost of social media marketing depends on where you are looking for your help. The range is anywhere from $500/month to $1,000/month. At the lower end, you may get access to scheduling posts and tracking clicks.

If you need more, then expect your costs also to go up. Expect between $3,000 – 5,000 per month if you require frequent content creation. This includes graphic design services.

This is all to understand the end goal and how this particular product will help with that end goal for the company. Of course, we also need project goals, but those can sometimes be less important initially, especially if not fully defined. With this process of meetings, interviews, and collaborative work sessions, the goal is to build a stronger relationship and an aligned position of strength for the project to move forward with.

Social Media Marketing Price Points

DIY (Do-It-Yourself): $500/mo

This is simply buying yourself a platform like Hootsuite or Bufferapp and using this for posting across all channels. This could work out well for someone who has the time to manage this. However, if you’re looking for someone else to handle it all — then that works too.

Social Media Marketing Cost Breakdown

Facebook Campaigns: $1 per day — $3 per post. This depends on your audience size and engagement levels. A regular text post can be anything between $1 – $3. Plus, there are additional costs for boosting these posts. You may also need help with creating imagery or video for this campaign.

Twitter Campaigns:$2/tweet. This includes retweets and replies.

Google+ Campaigns: $5 per hangout. Google Plus Hangouts is one of the most popular forms of social media marketing. Your pricing will depend on how long you want this to last.

LinkedIn Campaigns: $2/post . You can get regular posts or sponsored content here.

Pinterest Post Creation: ~$5 per photo-board post, depending on where your target audience is. Expect to pay more if you’re targeting USA-based audiences.

Instagram Campaigns: This depends on the number of likes you get, starting from $1 per like up to $3-$5 per like.

YouTube Video Marketing Strategy: This starts at around $300 – 500 per month, depending on the length and complexity of your video content.

What is the process of Social Media Marketing?

The process of Social Media Marketing is what it sounds like. It’s the marketing of your product or service through the use of social media. Depending on what you are trying to promote, various mediums are utilized to reach your target audience best.

These may include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or blogging sites. Almost any form of social media is available for use in this process.

Social media has proved an unprecedented tool for marketing products and services across a wide variety of industries due to its ability to connect people with similar interests at the click of a button.

Beyond that basic premise is the potential for businesses worldwide to develop relationships with customers on a more personal level by utilizing social media instead of traditional forms of advertising. Social networks provide a forum for an infinite range of interactions and online experiences that weren’t possible before.

Social Media Marketing Process

For marketers to tap into this potential, they must first understand the three basic steps in the process.

Planning – Keyword Research
Implementation – Content Creation & Distribution
Monitoring – Tracking & Analytics

The plan involves mapping out every step needed to accomplish your marketing goals on social media sites. For example, if you’re promoting a product or service, you’ll need to research the keywords related to it based on various demographics. Then you will create content around those keywords in specific areas where your target audience is most likely to spend time online.

Finally, once your content is posted, you’ll want to monitor how it performs. Did people click on the links? How many liked it? Were there any comments or shares? These are all important factors that will affect your next steps.

When deciding what to post and where it’s vital to remember that content engages viewers and generates actual sales; for this process to be successful, marketers must provide interesting, relevant information in addition to their product or service offerings.

How do you hire a Social Media Marketing Expert?

If you are looking to hire a social media marketing team, it is important to identify the right person for the job. While it may seem like social media has taken over, many companies still do not participate in this space.

Therefore, it’s always best practice to determine whether or not you need someone on your staff before hiring them. Here are some tips on identifying an expert candidate and what questions you should ask during an interview.

Do they fit our culture?

The first thing that comes into play when deciding if someone will be successful within your organization is demeanor and personality. Some of these characters can come across as slightly selfish and self-absorbed.

So it can be important to make sure they will mesh well within your team’s environment without negatively impacting the culture you’ve created for your company.

What are their current social media marketing efforts?

It is always best practice to identify an individual actively engaging in the online space on behalf of another client. The reason is that there are ‘experts’ out there that claim to know all about social media but have never put into action what they claim to know.

It’s better to find someone who understands how much work goes into actually implementing a strategy than someone who talks about doing it. Try to get examples of case studies or metrics so you can understand the potential reach and how it could benefit your business.

How well do they know our industry?

The next important thing to consider is whether or not someone can relate to your industry. You should find an individual with experience working with companies in a similar space because one of the biggest benefits of social media marketing is its ability to help educate people about your product or service.

This means you need somebody who understands what makes each industry unique and how these factors impact which social channels are used, and what content should be shared.

So try to ask questions during an interview related directly to this topic so you can understand how much research they’ve already completed. This can also give you an idea of their familiarity with tools and platforms that may help create your company’s social media marketing plan.

What is their background?

It is important to note the candidate’s educational and professional background. Do they understand the digital strategy and how it can benefit your business, or are they just used to sending out tweets on Twitter without any real purpose behind them?

It is ideal to find an individual who has experience working within your industry at another company because this means they have already done the research needed to determine what strategies should be implemented. So ask questions about their education, previous employers, etc., so you can decide if this person would be a good fit.

How will they measure success?

Finally, one of the most important things to gauge during an interview is how you will know the candidate is doing their job. Do they have a system in place that allows them to determine if their efforts are working or not easily? If it’s too difficult for whomever you hire to quantify their successes, then it might be better to look at other options.

Try to figure out what metrics matter most and make sure whomever you select has a method in place for monitoring these analytics. It should be simple enough so all stakeholders can stay informed about how effective.

All these qualities make a great social media marketer. You may also ask design firms if they have social media experts. Peterman Design Firm knows what it takes to succeed in social media marketing.

How does Social Media Marketing fit into Product Development?

The marketing team for a company is tasked with the goals of increasing sales and creating brand awareness. These goals often fit into the overall strategy of developing products that customers will buy en masse. The rise of numerous social media platforms has greatly expanded the number of companies that can use this method to increase their business, particularly small businesses and non-profits.

However, many smaller companies and non-profit organizations may not possess the resources to create comprehensive strategies. Therefore, making smart choices about which social media platforms to use and best fit within an overall product development plan becomes important.

This includes encouraging customers to get involved in your product development process by giving them a voice in its creation. But more on that later. Analyzing the current social media landscape will include understanding where most of your target market engages in online life.

Social Media Platforms

Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat are examples of popular social media platforms with immense power in influencing product development.

Facebook is still a leading player for this type of activity, but it is not as powerful as it once was for marketing or creating brand awareness.

Other platforms with growing popularity are Tumblr, Vine, and now Periscope (Twitter’s live video-streaming platform). Each has its characteristics.

Younger age groups, particularly Millennials, often favor Instagram. It is also growing in popularity among many other demographic groups for its visual appeal and ease of use. The filters make it fun to take photos. The ads are purchased on a cost-per-impression basis; therefore, the photo will only appear once based on how many times others like or view that page.

Pinterest has also gained much popularity as an image-sharing platform with over 80 million users. Still, this type of content can be shared anywhere across the web since images are often found via Google search results.

Snapchat allows businesses to develop product feature ideas directly from user suggestions by opening up their private conversations to include select customers identified as influential by their followers and friends.

The success of using social media to promote business has not gone unnoticed by profit-focused companies that now use the same networks as their primary marketing strategies.

What tools are used for Social Media Marketing?

The term Social Media Marketing (SMM) includes promoting products and brands on social media sites. Therefore, using multiple tools that support marketing campaigns is inevitable: advertising and tracking tools, analytics tools, content management systems, and many more. What are the most popular tools for SMM? Here is a brief overview of some of the most important ones:

Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights is an analytics tool offered by Facebook to track user interactions with online ads and websites integrated with its “Like” button. The service provides information about users, such as their demographics or behaviors they show on your website. It also offers data on page views and reaches, thus allowing marketers to improve their campaigns accordingly.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Using several tools that are part of the GA-suite allows Facebook advertisers to track conversions on different ad sets and monitor live ads.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a Twitter desktop application that helps you manage your Twitter account efficiently. It allows users to monitor conversations relevant to them, interact with “super-users,” create custom categories for tracking specific hashtags or keywords; furthermore, it offers detailed attribution metrics on each tweet/retweet/like/join the conversation within specified periods.

Facebook Power Editor

Facebook Power Editor is a tool designed for large-scale management of Facebook ad campaigns. It allows users to download their complete advertising data in multiple ways. Furthermore, it provides various tools that support creating and organizing Facebook ad campaigns efficiently.

Crowdbooster

Crowdbooster is a Social Media Management tool helping you manage your Twitter account efficiently by providing detailed analytics on tweets/retweets/mentions, among others. It also offers customizable push notifications for selected keywords/hashtags within the dashboard. Thus, the user can be proactive in dealing with potential issues before they escalate into major predicaments.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Why is Social Media Marketing Important?